Cockettes in “Pearls Over Shanghai”
The Cockettes were an acid drag troupe in the late 60s and early 70s inspired by the counterculturist hippie movement as a means to push the limits of gender, sexual, and fashionable norms of the developing United States. Their costumes and productions were highly theatrical, inspired by cultural icons such as Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong. Members included male, female, white, black, Native American, straight, queer, cis and trans people.
The Cockettes appropriated Asian cultural fittings and adornments to express their femininity and sexuality, embracing a “freakshow” appearance. Their first showpiece, “Pearls Over Shanghai,” was a comedic operetta about sexual relationships between ethnic groups and white slavery in the Orient. The show exoticized Asia, characterizing foreign aristocrats, opium addicts, slave traders, whores, sailors, and more sterotyped Asian people played by the drag queens.
This independent press flier for “Pearls Over Shanghai” provides information about the Cockettes' show, depicting a drag queen in traditional Asian kimono, wig, fan, and makeup. The typography is in a chop suey font to further the Asian narrative.
